


where my heart is going

by headlong



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Slash, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 07:24:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20888333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlong/pseuds/headlong
Summary: Being on the winning side of a war was supposed to make things simple. But Byleth is a man who resists simplicity -- and, as Felix discovers, so is he.





	where my heart is going

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellsgnaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsgnaw/gifts).

> major spoilers for black eagles; nobody dies in this fic, but there's pretty significant discussion of canon character deaths in that route.

Felix finds Byleth at the pond, as he knew he would. It’s a warm day in late Harpstring Moon, too nice to be inside. The dormitories are stuffy with spring heat, the classrooms worse, and he’s never really adapted to how much emptier the buildings feel than he’s used to.

Garreg Mach moves around the pair of them; soldiers coming and going, the breeze murmuring through the trees, the low hum of voices drifting across the water from the marketplace. It’s busy here, for an abandoned school turned base camp turned something nebulous and undefined. Emperor Edelgard had, after the end of the war, ordered her Black Eagle Strike Force to take a break before taking up their positions in her new Empire – and, while not all of them had complied, most of those who had have elected to spend it at the monastery. It’s the closest thing many of them have to a home, after all.

That goes double for Felix, orphaned noble of an orphaned nation, and probably for Byleth too. At least, it would explain why he’d reportedly agreed to take his long-overdue vacation with uncharacteristically little fuss. And rest suits him, here, the way it never will Felix. He looks for all the world like a country peasant, not Fodlan’s most feared tactician: pants rolled up, pale calves submerged in the water. One hand braced on the dock beside him, the other curled around a mostly-eaten apple, juice smeared and shining on his palm.

“Professor.”

Byleth tips his head back, regards this strange visitor upside down. Their hair is almost the same colour, now, the same as it was when they first met; blue-black, unknowable as the water of the pond. He looks, Felix notes, entirely unsurprised. “Felix.” 

“Spar with me. There’s nothing else to do around here.”

“If you like.”

But he doesn’t seem like he’s going anywhere anytime soon. So Felix, despite himself, finds himself hovering – and then, even  _ more _ despite himself, sitting on the dock too. At right angles to each other, Felix facing east towards the market, legs crossed loosely before him.

“Did you have a time in mind? We’re losing daylight.”

“Mm. Ten minutes.” Byleth blinks, the shift of his eyes disconcerting at this angle. “I know this is a change in topic, but… you’ve never thought about trying to fish, have you?”

“Hardly. Hunting’s fine, but I find fishing dull. There’s no challenge to sitting there and hoping that a fish stoops to biting.”

“I see why you’d say that. But it’s just… I think you’d maybe like it. Something about the way I leave my body when I fish is almost like the way I do when I fight. When I’m in the moment, but also beyond it, somewhere bigger and greater. But… that doesn’t make any sense, does it.”

“No, I think I understand. The way a sword becomes an extension of your body, and you’re both outside and inside yourself at once.”

“I thought you might.”

Byleth cricks his head back into place, bites into the core of his apple. Felix, fascinated, wonders if it’s a product of growing up hungry or just an idiosyncracy. Then Byleth presses his hand to his mouth, surprisingly delicate, and when he brings it away, there are seeds there, deep brown against his palm like a secret.

“Swords again today?”

“I haven’t decided yet. It’s hot, and the training grounds are always the worst in weather like this. Fists, maybe.”

“You’re better at hand-to-hand than me.”

“It’d be healthy for you to lose.”

“And terribly unhealthy for you to win.”

“I’m not a child, Professor.” Then Felix catches the curve at the edge of his former teacher’s mouth, still alien in its newness, and has to revise his approach. “You’re mocking me.”

“Not really. How about best of three, then? Swords, fists, and then lances.”

He thinks about it. Although Felix has the edge in unarmed combat, he can begrudgingly admit that Byleth will beat him in swords, the same way things have gone for the last six years. Which leaves the third round as the real contest, here.

“I’ve never seen you use a lance in a real battle. Only during training.”

“I could say the same to you.”

Felix lounges back, rests his weight on his hands, tips his head upward. The sky is a clear, unending blue. “You forget I spent years sparring with –”  _ the boar prince.  _ “Dimitri.”

“And I spent years sparring with Jeralt,” Byleth says levelly, engrossed by the way the sunlight catches the water, “who favoured the lance too, so I’d call us even.”

He appreciates the thought, but it’s not the same kind of wound. After Jeralt died, everyone and their mother had been tripping over themselves to reassure Byleth: that his father had loved him, that it had been a senseless cruelty, that Garreg Mach would have their revenge. The best Felix had gotten, after Tailtean, was that nobody would look him in the eye.

(He had made himself watch as Edelgard had executed Dimitri. Even as Ingrid had turned away; even as Sylvain had stared unseeing into the middle distance. It was the least he could do for the man – the  _ thing_ – who had, once, been his best friend.)

“Lances will be fine.”

Byleth trails his hands in the water to clean them. There’s the silver flash of a fish, far below, as the apple seeds slip through his fingers. “All right. I’ll meet you there.”

True to his word, Byleth arrives at the training grounds almost exactly ten minutes later. Felix beats him to the punch, of course, already there, and warming up with a blade. The forms are deeply ingrained in him by now, but still manage to be familiar rather than boring.

“What do you want to start with?”

Felix doesn’t stop moving through his passes, or even spare more than a flicker of a glance in his companion’s direction. “Lances.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Byleth head to the weapon rack. So he finishes the form he’s going through, sheathes his sword, and when he turns around, his old professor is holding out a lance haft-first.

“Thank you,” he says, and moves to take it.

But Byleth doesn’t let go. If anything, his grip on the weapon only tightens, knuckles blanching with the force of holding on. “Before we start – is something wrong? You only ask to spar when something’s bothering you, these days. You don’t have to talk to me about it, of course, but…”

Of course something’s wrong. Things haven’t been  _ right _ for a long time, even before the war, even before his life had become a string of losses. And Felix opens his mouth, but there’s nowhere to begin.

(No way to begin to explain that, when Sylvain had found him training one sleepless night after the war had been won, after they’d returned to Garreg Mach, after he was supposed to be done hurting, and said  _ you never change, huh, Felix_, it had embedded itself in him like a thorn. A thorn he’d spent days circling around, poking at like a fresh wound, running his thumb over, driving it deeper with every touch. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the idea that he hadn’t changed, that he had only stagnated – or the idea that, if he  _ had  _ changed, it had been a process like a stick being whittled down by a dagger. That he was different, now, but only because of what had been shaved off him.)

“It’s nothing, Professor.”

(Glenn. Dimitri. Garreg Mach. Rodrigue. Dimitri again, for good.)

“Well,” he says, finally relinquishing the weapon. “If you’re sure.”

They take their marks quickly, after that. It’s not like Byleth to pry at the worst possible moment, and it makes Felix itchy, too quick to land the first strike. But Byleth’s shorter than most of his usual sparring partners, with the exception of Ingrid; his stance is more fluid, and he relies on technique over brute strength. And he’s unpredictable, too, mixing up huge sweeps with quick, darting jabs. Even though he’s not a spearman by trade or preference, he’s formidable, moving like he was born with a lance in his hands. Felix has to adjust his approach accordingly, not used to being the same size as his opponent. 

But it’s still… a surprisingly short match. Because Felix is hungry, today, the way he seldom is; the way he had always admired Byleth for being, and found lacking in himself. And there’s a moment where Byleth goes in for a sweep, overestimating the fraction of an opening he’s been given. And Felix moves on instinct, on phantom memories of an opponent who had also favoured heavy brute-force swings, and steps to the side and jabs. And then the point of his spear is hovering over Byleth’s breastbone.

They stare at each other for a long, frozen second. Byleth’s breathing hard, but Felix is breathing harder. But, even once Byleth lowers his weapon, it still doesn’t sink in that he’s won. The world doesn’t begin to filter back in, doesn’t return to normal the way it always does after a battle. It stays sharp with the fight, air thick and uncomfortable, almost solid in his lungs.

“Well done,” says Byleth. “But if I can offer some advice, your stance was too rigid. You should try move move smoothly, and balance your weight on the balls of your feet.”

Felix grits his teeth, forces himself to relax his shoulders. His hands are slick against the wood. “I know.”

He can handle the criticism; really, he can. But beating Byleth was supposed to feel better than this. Was supposed to have kindled some satisfaction in him, no matter how fleeting. But instead, there’s nothing in him at all. Nothing, and the remembrance that, long ago, he had known a spearman vulnerable to the same kind of manoeuvre.

“Swords?” asks Byleth.

It’s hard to tell if he’s being considerate or not, characteristically both easy and impossible to read at once. But there’s something deeply wrong, here. It sits heavy on Felix’s tongue, tastes sour in the back of his mouth. But there’s no other way for him to exorcise it, except through the fight. Except by wearing his body out until his mind follows suit; until he can’t remember anything about himself; until he’s a collection of aches and pains that have nothing to do with the absences in him.

“Swords,” he answers.

*

Harpstring Moon rolls into Garland Moon. The rainy season descends on Garreg Mach, bringing with it the summer humidity, thick and oppressive. Byleth sheds none of his dozens of layers of clothing, but his hair is long enough that he takes to wearing it in a small tail, the exposed curve of his neck like something divine. The first time Felix sees it up close, when Byleth drops by the training hall to ask him if he’d be willing to take down a group of bandits in a nearby village, he has the strangest urge to throw himself upon that altar. Then he realises that thought probably qualifies as blasphemy, and then, with a hollow sort of satisfaction, that there’s no church left to prosecute him if he did.

(He files away what that actually  _ means _ for another time.)

“Take someone with you,” Byleth says. “They’re meant to be a fairly small party, but it’s too dangerous to send you out alone. Ingrid, maybe.”

“No thanks.”

“Felix, I won’t have you surviving the war only to get killed by some backwoods bandits.”

“Like any of them could take  _ me _ down.”

But he does anyway. He rounds up Ingrid, where she’s idling around the stables, and Sylvain, sitting over a cold and empty teacup in the gardens. To be honest, it seems like both of them will take whatever excuse he offers to be anywhere but here. He knows the feeling.

They ride northwest, picking their way along one of the trails that lead into the valley below Garreg Mach. The sky is clearing up, a tentative yet hopeful blue, but it rained through the night and part of the morning. and the ground’s still a little soggy beneath their horses’ hooves.

So the three of them descend, and none of them say anything. What is there left between them that words can cover? Maybe the silence would be different, if Dimitri were here too. But, with the last of the childish scales fallen from Felix’s eyes, it seems to him that things would be exactly the same. And they still wouldn’t have anything to say that isn’t about the time when they were happy.

Of course, it’s Ingrid who speaks first. She always  _ was _ the bravest of them, the most open about being ensnared by the treacheries of her own heart. “You know, since we’re all here, we still haven’t talked about –”

He doesn’t want to talk about any of the million things she surely means. As if their friendship doesn’t run on pretending they don’t have problems, and that those problems aren’t all bound up with each other. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Felix, you can’t go on bottling up your feelings like this.”

“Yes, I can. Besides, you’re hardly one to talk about burying your feelings.”

“That’s different.”

“No, it’s not. You’re being a hypocrite.”

“Ingrid,” Sylvain cuts in, voice firm. “Please.”

Ingrid’s hands are white where they grip her reins. “Please  _ what_, Sylvain? Of course you’d side with him.”

“What? Ingrid, no, you’ve got it all wrong –”

“Can we,” Felix says, altogether too loudly, “just do what we came here for, and kill some bandits?”

“Absolutely not. I understand if you don’t want to talk about most of the war,” Ingrid says, “but  _ Dimitri_ –”

“Dimitri what.”

“Dimitri deserves better than for us to go on pretending he didn’t exist!”

Felix scowls, and keeps barrelling forward. It’s easier. “I’ve said it before, and I suppose I’ll have to say it again. You didn’t see him when he went to quash the rebellion in western Faerghus, when we were still boys. There was something inhuman in him, back then, which all his talk of chivalry couldn’t mask. In the way he held his lance, and the way he cut down all who challenged him.”

Ingrid squares her shoulders. “I’m not going to pretend I did. And I’m not saying that Dimitri was perfect, either. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He was too stubborn, and too obsessed with his impossible ideals, and there was that madness in him, towards the end. But I won’t have us go on ignoring his death, because it’s… because it’s easier to remember him as a beast than as our friend!”

“Who said we’re ignoring it?” Sylvain says, quietly. “Just because we aren’t talking about it.”

Only the absurdity of the situation – that  _ Sylvain_, of all people, is playing at peacemaker – makes Felix shut up. When he shoots a sideways look at Ingrid, she at least has the good grace to look vaguely mortified.

In annoyance, he nudges his horse to ride a little further ahead; his friends still know him well enough to let him go. Talking about it like this is all wrong, and there’s no way to set it right. Mourning, at least as Felix experiences it, is slow and deep and silent. Like the shift of magma beneath the planet’s surface, or the shadow of a giant creature at the bottom of a lake. The idea of fishing it up, of bringing it to light and making it public, of laying it out on a slab and dissecting it in front of others, is painful enough that it feels like reliving the initial wound all over again.

Better to pretend that nothing had ever meant anything to him. That he’d never had any ideals to lose, or that he’d always been blunt and bitter and sarcastic, or that, at Tailtean, a reformed crybaby hadn’t found he still had tears left to shed. That maybe his world  _ can _ boil down to the edge of a blade, to the instant at the beginning of a fight when he’s not sure if he’s going to live or die. That he hasn’t shrivelled up to a fraction of the person he could’ve been, once.

They come upon the bandits not too much later, in a valley below them, location given away by the smoke rising from a campfire. It’s a relief, honestly, to be anticipating open combat, and not sniping at his friends from behind the cover of their mutual grief. The group has made camp near one of the small towns clustered around Garreg Mach, which honestly still all look the same to Felix. He’d been mostly spared from supply run duty during the war, either because he was a footsoldier at heart who disliked riding if there wasn’t a battle at the end of it, or because of the complications inherent to sending a former Kingdom noble out jobbing for the Empire. Between that, and the fact that he’d spent most of his time as a student on monastery grounds, this feels like some undiscovered country. Or a country he had known, once, when he was young, and returned to as an adult to find wholly unfamiliar.

The three of them don’t just charge into battle, though. Even in Byleth’s absence, they make sure to talk strategy beforehand, taking shelter in a nearby clearing. Felix is the first to spring from his horse, and ties her to a tree with the ease of practice. The ground is uneven under his feet, sodden from this morning’s rainfall, if not quite enough to be treacherous.

“What’s our plan?”

“All right,” says Sylvain, who’s always been the tactician of their little circle, even if he’d kept quiet about it until the professor had managed to draw it out of him. He doesn’t dismount himself, but rubs a patient hand along his horse’s neck. “I’ll ride in from the front and draw their attention. You two, sneak around on foot and flank them once I’ve engaged. It’ll be easy.”

Ingrid’s mouth puckers slightly, but she must have expected this when she chose not to bring her pegasus. And Felix isn’t  _ concerned  _ about Sylvain, exactly – he has heavy armour, magic sizzling under his skin, and a knack for escaping just about any situation unharmed – but he has to at least say something. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Aww. Worried about me, Felix?”

“Not even slightly. I’d just hate to be the one breaking the news of your stupid, avoidable death to the professor.” A wicked thought occurs to him, and he presses that sudden advantage. “Or to –”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Ingrid cuts in. “According to Byleth, they shouldn’t number more than fifteen or twenty, and we have better training and equipment. We should even be home by lunchtime.”

“Fine. Give us ten minutes to get into position.”

They split off accordingly, Felix and Ingrid peeling off while Sylvain runs a final check on his weapons and armour. It’s easy for the pair of them to pick their way through the woods, since the encampment remains in easy sight below them.

It’s a beautiful place, at least. The war hit Garreg Mach early, and centred on the monastery instead of the town when it did, and there’s been time for nature to rebuild itself since. The sunlight filters calmly through the leaves, the only sound their footsteps and far-off birdcalls.

For once, Ingrid is quiet.  _ Too _ quiet, by her standards, and a thoughtful Ingrid is a dangerous Ingrid; poised to dredge up some ghost he isn’t prepared to deal with, some childhood wound she wants to analyse together. Setting his shoulders, he decides to nip this threat in the bud.

“If you’re planning to continue our conversation from earlier, without Sylvain to interrupt you, think again. I don’t want to talk to you about this, now or ever. But especially not before battle.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything. But – you know this conversation isn’t over. Someday, we’ll speak about this again.”

Felix kicks at the ground. “I’m not stupid enough to think you’d let things lie.”

“I know you must think of me as some irritating meddler, who only exists to henpeck you, but I’m only meddling because I care. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know. But that doesn’t make it easier.”

Distantly, Sylvain’s horse whinnies a battle cry. Ingrid’s frown carves itself into even deeper lines, and she sets one hand on her lance. “There’s our cue.”

He draws his sword. “See you on the other side.”

She goes left, he goes right. Sylvain’s making his stand just behind the entrance to the encampment, forcing a bottleneck, and Felix lets himself watch for a moment.

The first thing he notices about his foes is that there are many, many more of them than he had thought there would be. The second thing he notices is that they’re… strangely well-equipped, weapons of steel rather than the cheap iron that usually characterises these groups. Maybe they have a rich noble backer, or maybe they’ve pillaged one of the battlefields that was around here during the war. Felix charges straight in, disgusted by either option, and catches a streak of silver and green as Ingrid does the same.

It’s easy. Too easy, in fact, considering the difference in numbers. One or two among the bandits might have received serious weapons training at some point, but the rest are clearly former villagers who’ve taken to banditry in the aftermath of the war. Their attacks are methodical, boring, and he pushes his way forward with little resistance.

Sylvain murmurs an incantation, and the thick scent of black magic fills the air. Ingrid’s lance flashes, too fast for the eye, and comes back crimson. Felix slicks his sweaty bangs out of his face, tightens his grip on his blade.

This doesn’t feel good. Not that killing ever does for him, not like some people, but there’s no sense of joy in his own strength. There’s artistry in a good battle, but this is more of a slaughter. Even as more bandits pour from tents, and their leader sounds a horn in a cry for backup, the numbness takes him.

But at some point in the fight, when his body stops working on pure reflex and his brain starts to take back over, Felix realises that he’s surrounded.

Some of that isn’t his fault – the fact there are more bandits than Byleth’s reports had indicated, or that they’d set up camp in advantageous terrain – but the fact he had allowed himself to get separated and lose track of his comrades absolutely is. And he’d left the Aegis Shield back at the monastery, figuring he wouldn’t need it for such an easy job; sick with the hope, carried since Fhirdiad, that he might never need to wear it again. And he’ll be fine, of course, but there’s a lesson here, and he still doesn’t want to learn it.

He counts maybe ten opponents, and his heart kicks up a little. He parries one bandit’s strike, ducks under the guard of another, lays the second one flat with a gouge across his torso. Leaps back, hits the first one with a Thunder spell. Dives back in with his sword again. The third, coming up on him with an axe, is disarmed easily, and Felix clubs him with the butt of his sword to make sure he stays down. He locks blades with the fourth, fells him with a sweep of the leg, follows with a downward swing. The first one, apparently still up despite being fried by magic, lurches forward, but his movements are predictable, and he falls to a deep slice along his sword arm. Then he ducks a wild blow from another swordsman, steps in and runs him through. The seventh, at this point, has bolted. The eighth comes at him with bare fists, and Felix socks him in the face hard enough to hear something  _ crunch _ under his knuckles. The ninth and tenth scatter as well, and he draws in a deep breath.

And then there’s one left, a hulking man taller and broader than Felix, with a lance that looks like a child’s toy in his hands. His straggly hair might, once, have been blond. And there’s a shadow of Dimitri in how he swings, power unbound by grace or sanity, and Felix hesitates an instant too long. The head of the lance drives down, down, and he feels like he’s deep underwater, like he’s dragging his whole body through mud, like he can’t think, like he can’t  _ breathe _– 

But the impact never comes. Crimson blooms from the man’s chest, a sudden violence, and he crumples. Sylvain wrenches his lance from the bandit’s body, looks down at Felix. From atop his horse, weapon bloodied and eyes impossibly far away, he’s the picture of one of those knights he so hates.

“I was fine,” Felix tells him, straightening up and lowering his blade. His ponytail’s come loose and his bangs have gone everywhere, but he’s intact. “I didn’t need your help.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, Sylvain, I didn’t. And even if I  _ was _ in over my head, I would’ve dealt with it. I’m not some rookie who needs a brave knight to swoop in and save him.”

“Felix,” Sylvain says, “I’m not saying any of that. I know you’re more than capable. But… when did you stop fighting like you want to live?”

* 

Sylvain leaves for Enbarr, after that. On some excuse about petitioning Edelgard for rule of the Gautier territories, which have been seized by the Empire, and remain in limbo. Felix estimates his odds as fairly good, so long as he can behave in front of the Emperor and not flirt with her.

(But Sylvain had never wanted to live in Gautier lands, let alone rule them. He’d confessed as much to Felix in a whisper as a boy, when he’d been brought along on one of Margrave Gautier’s visits, but it had been obvious in him even as a man. They’d been in different houses for the Miklan business, Sylvain an early convert to the Eagles while Felix was still figuring out the new professor from the safety of the Lions, but there had been a horrible set to his shoulders when he’d returned that day, and it had never really left him.)

Ingrid goes with, for similar reasons. While Galatea territory has avoided the worst of the war, and while her father still lives, the fate of their lands also remains undecided. Privately, Felix thinks that some time in the capital will do her good, anyway. Or, at the very least, that the court of Emperor Edelgard will be better for a lady knight than Fhirdiad ever was.

The morning of their departure dawns bright and clear. Felix skips their goodbyes, steals a javelin from the training grounds, and takes himself fishing.

The pond at Garreg Mach does, in fact, have a shallow end. Following the promenade along the greenhouse leads to a ramp that slopes into the water, which he’d discovered on one of his late-night walks while still a student. Felix shucks off his shoes, takes his shirt off and folds it on top of them. Then he wades out, into the bracing cold.

As it turns out, fishing with a spear seems much easier than it is. He has to account for the way the water bends the light, for the fact he’s striking both down and forward, for the fact that even the slightest movement seems to disturb the fish, for the fact that a lance will never sit as easily in his hand as a blade. The sun rises higher, and he angles himself to keep his shadow behind him.

It’s not a complete wash, at least, and it’s the perfect day for standing around in a pond. After a few false starts, where he misjudges where his spear will land and sends the fish darting away, he starts to fall into a rhythm. Manages to skewer a few herring, and one or two pike. In the absence of any forward planning, he winds up lining them up along the ramp, a parade of corpses with mismatched wounds. But it’s a slow process, still. 

At some point, five minutes or five hours in, a shadow falls on the water. He lets himself glance up, can’t decide if he feels like speaking or not.

“You didn’t see them off.”

Felix straightens, smooths hair out of his face. Byleth seems altogether unperturbed to find one of the former highest-ranking generals in the Imperial army shirtless, pants cuffed above his knees, and thigh-deep in the Garreg Mach pond. Then again, probably not much  _ does _ perturb him, at this point.

“I didn’t need to. Because even if I try my best to avoid them, we’ll meet again. I’ll probably keep running into those two all my life.”

“I heard you argued.”

“We always argue.”

“Worse than usual.”

“That depends how you define usual.” Felix digs the butt of his lance into the soft muck at the bottom of the pond. “Hey, Professor. What do you think will happen to Fraldarius territory, if I give up my claim on it?”

“Hmm. Well, I expect Edelgard will fold the lands into adjacent domains. Since most of the other nobles in that area opposed her, maybe they’ll go to Gautier.”

“Oh yeah? Sylvain would hate that. He’s going to have enough on his plate managing his own lands, assuming he wins them back from the Emperor.”

“Well, who knows. Maybe she’ll reinstate the son of some Fraldarius or Blaiddyd branch family, make him swear fealty, and hand them over to him instead.”

What Felix wouldn’t give to know as little about Kingdom politics as Byleth seems to. “There aren’t any Fraldarius branch families. Or Blaiddyd.”

“Oh,” says Byleth, and then, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We all made our choices.”

“I know.”

Felix expects him to go on, to justify his words as he always does, but he stops himself there. The silence that settles in its place doesn’t mean anything at all. The summer breeze catches the ends of Byleth’s hair; too long to be called a fringe, but too short to fit into his ponytail.

“No buts? That isn’t like you, Professor.”

“Buts would be pointless,” Byleth says. “Anyway, I have something for you.”

He holds out a small bundle, wrapped in the cloth the kitchens use. And it occurs to Felix, distantly and then much more immediately, that it’s lunchtime.

He dunks himself full-body in the water to cool down, to wash the sweat from his back and the phantom scent of fish from his hands. When he emerges and hauls himself up the ramp, dripping wet and thoroughly bedraggled, Byleth’s eyes linger on him a moment too long.

(Surely he has to be imagining it. Surely there’s no way that Byleth’s gaze darts away too quickly, as if letting himself look was somehow unforgivable.)

“Oh, hold on. Here.”

Felix gratefully accepts the towel he’s handed, wrapping it around his shoulders. It’s a faded white, the same as his old Garreg Mach undershirt. When he glances up from drying himself off, Byleth still isn’t looking at him, seemingly absorbed by a loose thread on the cloth he’s holding.

“What’s that?”

“It isn’t anything fancy,” Byleth says. His expression is something Felix can’t place. “Just a sandwich. But I figured you probably hadn’t eaten.”

Felix unwraps the bundle, nibbles tentatively at its contents. Plain white bread. Meat, cheese, lettuce. Mustard, which he doesn’t remember ever mentioning that he likes. The seeds crack gently under his teeth when he bites down.

“It’s good,” he manages, after swallowing. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Are the fish biting today?”

He appreciates that Byleth doesn’t ask why he’s fishing. So Felix doesn’t have to say,  _ I felt like doing something not at all like myself. _

“I’m not doing that kind of fishing. But yes, I think there are a lot of them. We’ll be able to feast tonight.”

“Hmm,” Byleth says, and then, “Do you want to compete? Your spearfishing against my line.”

That isn’t like him. Usually it’s Felix who suggests some contest or another, and then has to coax Byleth into going along with it. Then again, considering the difference in their experience here, he can’t really blame him.

“It’s not very sporting to suggest a battle you know you’re going to win, Professor.”

“Admitting defeat so soon?”

“Hardly. Just pointing that out.”

“Is that a yes, then?”

It’s true that this isn’t likely to help him – to help  _ either _ of them – grow stronger, at least in any of the ways that matter. This won’t make him a better swordsman, or a better commander. And, theoretically, that’s the purpose of the exercise. Edelgard’s dream had been for a world where strength was no longer required; where he might be able to become more than just a blade, someday. And even if Felix wasn’t sure he’d ever truly believed in it, long since burnt out on any kind of idealism, he knows Byleth must have.

(It had been hard to believe in Edelgard, even at the end. Or, perhaps,  _ especially _ at the end, when it had become obvious he’d picked the winning side. When it had become obvious just where chivalry had gotten Faerghus and its beast prince, who had only ever showed his true self on the battlefield. But believing in Byleth – that had been easy.)

“All right. Do your worst.”

“Oh. I wasn’t sure you’d say yes, but I guess you really can’t resist the thrill of competition.” Byleth offers him the trace of a smile. “Then I’ll go fetch my things. And get your first batch of fish to the kitchen, so they don’t go bad in the sun.”

“I appreciate it.”

Byleth gets a bucket from the fishkeeper to transport everything, and trots off towards the monastery proper. In his absence, Felix polishes off the rest of the sandwich, rinses his hands in the water. He hangs the towel up to dry over a nearby bollard, and then arranges himself to lie on the ramp. The stone isn’t particularly comfortable, but it’s been warmed by the sun, and he throws an arm over his eyes and lets himself drift off.

It isn’t too long before there’s the sound of footsteps again, and Byleth returns. Felix glances at him upside down, suddenly unwilling to move. His old professor has found himself a huge floppy hat, incongruous against his mercenary clothes, and is carrying a hunk of bread and two huge buckets of ice. “To keep them fresh,” he explains, when he passes a bucket over. It isn’t especially heavy, but it’s large as his torso and unwieldy besides, and his fingers brush against Felix’s on the handle.

“And the bread?”

“I thought you could use it for bait. It’s a little stale, but the fish won’t mind.”

“Do fish even  _ eat _ bread? I thought they ate… worms. Pond weeds. The crawly things I see you using for bait.”

“Fish eat just about anything, I think. But bread has one advantage over those options. Because you can eat it too, if you get hungry enough.”

He considers the hunk of bread again. It’s a little hard when he presses his thumb against it, and even if it wasn’t dubiously fresh, he prefers the kind without seeds baked into the dough. More often than not, they tend to get caught in his teeth – which he can appreciate is at least a problem that fish won’t have. “That doesn’t seem likely.”

“Well.” Byleth’s lips jump in… confusion? Disappointment? Hurt? “I was joking.”

“Ah. I’m… sorry for missing that.”

“You don’t have to apologise. It wasn’t an especially good joke, and I’m still not used to making them.”

“It was a fine joke. I’m just not the best audience for it. And the point I was trying to make stands: it won’t come to that. I’ll hold off, and dine well tonight on the fish I caught to beat you.”

“We’ll see about that. Let’s prepare to start, then.”

Felix wades out to the spot where he’d had the best luck earlier, neither too deep nor too shallow, near one of the channels where water flows into the pond. There’s the flicker of a dark tail by his feet as he stirs up the soil with his passage. When he looks back over his shoulder, Byleth’s taken his position too, resolute in his usual blacks and fishing rod held in front of him like a blade.

“Ready?” he calls to the figure on the dock.

Byleth’s voice echoes back across the pond. “Ready!”

Felix doesn’t do too badly on his second run, although it feels like the fish have grown a little warier of him, and it takes him nearly ten minutes to chalk up his first catch. Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long at all for Byleth to start reeling in fish, and they come by the dozen. The tails sticking out of his bucket accumulate, and accumulate, at increasingly strange angles. And, on one hand, that makes perfect sense; of course the professor’s years of experience trump Felix’s mere hours of standing in the pond. On the other, though, that’s despite the fact Byleth is fishing blind, or that he’s fishing much closer to the shallows, or that half the population of Garreg Mach comes by to talk to him, even people Felix didn’t know were still here, and he indulges every single one of them.

(The sound of conversation catches his ears even though he’s not listening for it, Byleth’s low voice alternating with Dorothea’s higher and more strident one. He says something that must surprise her, and her laugh drifts across the water. Felix, lining up to skewer a pike, misses. It shoots away, and out of sight.)

A little before sunset, Felix decides that it’s probably time to give up. He’s losing light, he’s nearly out of bread, his back and shoulders ache, the water is starting to get chilly, and he isn’t going to be able to close the gap with the resources he has left. So, the next time Byleth catches a fish, he follows the line in to shore.

When he gets there, he hoists his arms up onto the edge of the dock, ignoring the way his body protests after so long fishing, and cranes his head to look at his old teacher. The water is deceptively deep here, and he has to kick to keep himself afloat. On particularly strong strokes, his toes brush the lakebed, stirring up soft eddies of mud.

“All right, Professor. I concede.”

But the look in Byleth’s eyes is all wrong. And Felix doesn’t expect glee from his usually stoic professor, but he doesn’t expect to see concern in that gaze either.

“You’re sunburnt.”

Felix glances down at himself, and realises, belatedly, that he is. Damn his pale north-Faerghus complexion which, even after years in central Fodlan, stubbornly refuses to tan. His whole torso is bright red, and even his exposed calves, eerie and pale in the water, look decidedly flushed.

(Ingrid and Sylvain, despite their light hair and skin, had always tanned instead. Only Dimitri had burned along with him, as red as if he’d been boiled instead of standing outside all day. Because Felix’s great-grandmother had been a Blaiddyd, or Dimitri’s paternal grand-uncle twice removed had been a Fraldarius, or some other contrived sequence of aristocratic happenstance.)

“Fuck.”

The profanity tears a startled sound from Byleth, somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “I’m sure there are salves for that.”

“There are, but it’s a nuisance.” He pats gingerly at his face, and winces when the sting settles in. It’s worse than it looks, apparently. “I won’t be able to train properly until this heals.”

“Hold on,” Byleth says, crouching down, and reaches for him. “Let me –”

The first brush of his fingers against Felix’s scorched shoulder sends him flinching back. “Sorry,” Felix mutters, steeling himself and shuffling forward again. He’s just sensitive because of the sunburn, or because everyone else in his life has learned not to touch him – or, maybe, he’s sensitive because this is Byleth, but that’s still too complicated a thought to entertain. “Try again whenever.”

“Sure. Don’t move, all right?”

Byleth murmurs something under his breath, and the first wave of a heal spell washes over him. It brings with it a feeling of cool relief, and numbs the stinging, but when the spell ends, Felix seems no less red than before. Nor does gently prodding the burned skin hurt any less. But the aftershock of the magic is still cool on his skin, lingering ice in this bewildering summertime.

It’s Byleth’s turn to apologise. “Sorry.”

“No point. I knew it’d need a salve anyway. Thanks for trying, though, Professor.” 

“I’ll check the greenhouse later. Manuela left last week, but maybe the keeper will know how to brew something for you.”

“You don’t have to go out of your way for me.”

“I’d like to.”

“Professor.” He corrects himself. “Byleth. Why?”

“Because –”

“Because you’d do it for any of your old students. Never mind. I know it was a stupid question.”

“Felix,” Byleth says, in that tone which means someone is inevitably about to talk down to him, “it… it wasn’t stupid. I just don’t know how to answer it yet.”

The water’s suddenly freezing around him. He pushes backward off the dock, kicks to keep himself afloat on his back. “Some genius tactician you are.”

“The things I know how to do start and end at the battlefield. They always have. And, if you’ve noticed, I’ve never been one of the people advocating for my genius.”

“Still. Hard to believe even the great Byleth has flaws.”

Actually, it’s surprisingly easy. Because maybe Byleth had begun as an untouchable figure in Felix’s mind, older and taller and impossibly quick with a sword, and the change in his appearance that had marked him as a great figure of destiny had only widened the gap between them. But after he’d returned to the Eagles, as the war had gone on, and as more and more had slipped through Felix’s fingers, the hollowness that pain had carved out in Byleth had become increasingly apparent.

(Felix had known, from the moment they had first crossed swords, that they were the same. But now, watching his old teacher in the dying light, almost the spitting image of the day they first met, he’s not so sure.)

Byleth shrugs it off, but his eyes skitter away. “I guess. Show me your catch?”

So they make their way back to the ramp at the other end of the pond, Byleth walking and Felix swimming a little ahead. One of the monastery cats is there when they get back, pale grey and thin as a whip, sniffing around the bucket of fish. It freezes up at their approach, sizes the pair of them up for a long moment, then snatches a fish and bounds off toward the greenhouse.

Felix strides up the ramp, makes himself inspect the damage. “Ah, dammit.” Judging by how much emptier the bucket is than when he left it, that wasn’t the only one of the monastery’s residents to have taken advantage of his absence. He’d figured it would be fine to take his eyes off his fish for a couple of minutes, but apparently not. Worst of all, he’s lost the queen loach which had been his prize catch. Overly proud of his efforts as a fisherman, he’d thought about swimming over to show off to Byleth when he’d caught it an hour before sunset – the size and the rarity and the cleanness of the spear wound at the base of its head – but thought better of the childish urge. It’s stupid of him to regret that. “This isn’t fair.”

“I suppose. But you  _ did  _ already concede.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t lose this badly. You believe me, don’t you?”

“I believe you,” Byleth says. In that ridiculous hat, eyes shaded and almost soft, he looks like something out of another life. Some strange heartsickness settles into Felix’s bones. “Come on. Get dressed, and let’s go deliver these to the kitchen.”

*

Byleth keeps himself busy, after that. Felix does too, as best as he can with no official duties, a whole-body sunburn, and nowhere to go now that the war is over. Edelgard would snap up him for her armed forces in a heartbeat, he knows, but the idea of working as the Empire’s dog sits worse with him now than it ever has. But what else is there, if not battle? If not a post as an Imperial general, then a life as a mercenary? He’s not built for normalcy, for anything but being a hired sword, for this lazy existence he’s somehow carved out at Garreg Mach.

“Well,” says Linhardt, who’s the only other Black Eagle left at this damn monastery, still picking his way through the library and Hanneman’s study and just about everything else readable, “then why  _ haven’t _ you moved on yet?”

He opens his mouth irritably, shuts it again. They’re in the dining hall, which is just about the only place he crosses over with anyone these days. Linhardt had been reading a book in some ancient tongue, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate by his elbow, when Felix had wandered in looking to take an early lunch. The pair of them weren’t close during the war – to be honest, they weren’t even really  _ friends_ – but any company is better than no company, when he’s in this kind of mood.

And Felix knows the answer, of course. It’s because Byleth’s still here, and he can’t stomach the idea of parting ways before he’s beaten his old teacher at the sword once and for all. But, by those standards, he knows he’ll be at Garreg Mach forever.

“You know,” he says. “It’s because the professor and I are rivals, and there’s no way of knowing when we’ll run into each other again. So if I leave here first, without defeating him, then I might never be able to.”

“Felix,” says Linhardt, “if I can offer a piece of advice? Stop trying to process all your feelings through your inferiority complex.”

“I don’t  _ have  _ an inferiority complex.”

“Then why do you want to defeat Byleth so badly, if not to soothe some deep emotional wound?”

“Why do you, I don’t know, want to be Fodlan’s greatest Crest researcher or whatever?”

“Because,” Linhardt says, in the slow tone of someone who knows he’s smarter than his audience and isn’t interested in hiding that, “it matters enough to me that I want to dedicate my life to it.”

Felix clenches his teeth. “I don’t care for what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying anything. Merely suggesting that you expand your range of emotions beyond wanting to fight things, and reevaluate from there.”

“I have plenty of emotions! But none of them are about Byleth.”

“Really.”

“All right,  _ some _ of them are about Byleth, but still not the kind you think.”

“I’m not the one you need to justify yourself to. And it’s not my business, one way or the other.” Linhardt turns his book to the next page. “But I’m sure our classmates will have a lot to say to you, the next time you meet, if you disappoint their darling professor.”

And that thought, the very concept of disappointing Byleth, is completely unpalatable. It makes something ugly twist in Felix, ugly in a way he hadn’t known he was capable of. “I’m not going to do that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ve stopped listening to me.”

Linhardt turns another page. “Right, well, good luck.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’re worse.”

That’s his cue to leave Linhardt there, with his book and his sandwich and his presumptuous ideas, and go do something better. But Felix can, begrudgingly, admit that he can’t let things with Byleth go unresolved. It feels like there’s too much at stake here, even though the war is over.

But how to begin to approach this?

Sharply, he wishes that Ingrid were here. Her advice would inevitably be too rigid and incorrect, but the dialogue would at least open up new ideas. Or Sylvain, who’d be equally wrong, but in the opposite direction; even though he’s not as bad now as he was, Sylvain would still probably suggest he walk right up to Byleth and ask him to dinner, if not skip the formalities completely. But, between those two and their contradictory worldviews, he’d probably manage to reach some kind of answer.

It’s strange, to realise that he does miss these people. Because he’s spent so long feeling  _ wrong _ around them that it’s too easy to forget they had been friends, once, and it had been easy.

He’ll have to write to them soon. Once he knows where to find them, and where they know where to find him, too. Which brings him back to the issue he was struggling with in the first place: that where Byleth goes after this will almost certainly impact where Felix does as well.

He doesn’t feel like training, even though he’s restless; he’d pushed himself too far this morning, annoyed by his recent lack of meaningful progress in just about everything, and to keep going would be foolishness. And so he finds himself back at his room – the same room he was assigned to on his very first day at Garreg Mach, more than six years ago – and at a completely loose end.

Even though it’s seen him through the end of his adolescence and into adulthood, the place has barely changed. Same blue carpet; same artificial neatness of a room barely lived in. Even the way the light streams in through the windows is the same, the way it drags over the carpet, highlights motes of dust in the air.

His eyes fall on the desk, which he hardly used even as a student. Maybe he can externalise his feelings, somehow, even if he can’t do that in conversation. So he fetches pen, ink, and paper from the drawers, and settles himself in front of them. But no matter how much he frowns at it, the page before him remains irritatingly blank.

The fact of the matter is, it feels too embarrassing to start writing down his feelings. Like he’s a teenage girl, whispering of love in her secret diary, not a grown man and war hero. But he has to try, because this isn’t just about him. The view from his window overlooks the back half of the Garreg Mach pond, placid in the summer afternoon, and it’s that which spurs him to begin.

_ I think Byleth might mean something to me, and I don’t know what. _

Absolutely not. Even looking at it laid out so plainly makes him hunch into himself. Maybe he needs to circle around the point, sneak up on it, so it doesn’t take fright and skitter away.

_ After Glenn died I _

It should be a paradox, for something to be too direct and too indirect at once. But Felix’s heart is an impossibility, concealed and yet out in the open, and his self follows from there.

_ Once, when I was eight, and Ingrid and Sylvain and I were all visiting Dimitri at Fhirdiad, we went down to the castle orchard. Glenn came too, even though he said he was too old to spend time with us. But he could never say no to Ingrid, either because he thought that was how he should treat his betrothed, or because he truly cared for her. I remember it was the season for apples, and they were red against the trees. And I remember that I was terrified of the way that you looked at me, mad with something I couldn’t begin to place, and _

There’s a tension in his jaw, and once the words stop swimming in front of him, he realises that he’s clenching his teeth. So he turns in his seat, and lobs the letter into the fire. It’s not a clean throw, bouncing off the back wall before it lands in the flames, but it doesn’t need to be. He’s sick of this.

But, for Byleth’s sake, he can’t give up just yet. Taking another page from his desk drawer, Felix smooths it out and readies his quill. Maybe, rather than a diary, he could try framing it as a letter. Pretend, if only for an instant, that he would reveal his heart; that there are things he’ll ever be able to talk about. He dips his pen into his inkwell, wipes off the excess, sets it to paper.

_ Dear Ingrid, _

No, that’s too formal. And worse, that formality would only put her on the defensive; it reads as far too uncharacteristic coming from him. He scratches it out, tries again.

_ Ingrid, _

Hardly better. It still comes off like he’s about to ask her for a favour – which, to be fair, he is. At one point, their relationship must have been something more than him only ever asking for advice, or her only ever nagging, but he can hardly remember that time. He scribbles over her name before he can chase that train of thought any further.

_ Sylvain, _

Who is he trying to fool, here?

_ Dorothea, _

All wrong. She’s become an important friend to him, but this is something he won’t be able to explain to her. Not because she isn’t intelligent, or empathetic, but because it’s impossible to talk about his wounds in a way that does them justice. Because talking about Byleth means working all the way backwards. Means unspooling himself completely; explaining the violences that led him to this point; to his own heart freezing over to the point where he can’t make any sense of it, unable to map out the shape of his feelings. He needs to consult someone who’s seen them all, firsthand. Out of respect for Dorothea and her sensibilities, though, he strikes her out with a single neat line.

_ Dimitri, _

He’s written out the name almost before he’s processed setting pen to paper. But, once it’s there, it stares at him accusingly, impossible to erase. The measure of his hurt, and the topography of his regrets.

And what would Dimitri even have to say of use on the matter? Even less than his other old friends, that’s for sure, but in far more words. Dimitri, so clumsy with girls that Sylvain, in their first month at Garreg Mach, had loudly pronounced him a lost cause where all their classmates could hear? Dimitri, for whom tenderness had always been a learned art? Dimitri, who had become estranged from love nine years ago, and never learned to meet it again?

(Dimitri’s love, on that day, had been buried alongside Felix’s. And it feels traitorous to steal down to those catacombs, now, alone, and think of robbing that grave.)

It’s too much – well, it’s often too much. But he can’t take it this time, more than usual. So he scrunches the note into a ball with altogether too much force, again, and tosses it into the fire. He can’t bear to watch it disintegrate in the flames, down to ash and then down to nothing, but the words on it all burn the same.

*

Byleth’s packing.

Felix only knows this because, when he’d returned to his room after lunch, there’d been a note slipped under the door. Even if the handwriting hadn’t been familiar to him, only one person left at the monastery would bother contacting him this way.

(Linhardt, apparently having exhausted the limits of what he could learn at Garreg Mach, had moved on too. Felix wasn’t particularly sorry to have seen him go, except that it highlighted the fact there were only two Black Eagles left at the monastery, in this space outside of time, and Felix still hadn’t even managed to begin untangling his feelings.)

_ The Goddess Tower, after the eighth bell tonight. Only if you’d like. _

As if there was any chance Felix wouldn’t.

So he whiles away the afternoon as best he can. Packs and repacks his bags; cleans and polishes his weapons until they shine, even though he’s already done that today; drafts half a letter to Dorothea, before he realises he’s dancing around the point again, and promptly scraps it. Sits down with a tome about magic, as much to burn an hour as to brush up on his reason skills. Switches to faith; goes back to reason when he remembers there’s nothing left to pray to. Gives up about half an hour before he’s supposed to meet with Byleth, and heads to the Goddess Tower anyway.

This place hasn’t changed, surviving unaffected by the war, or the fickle movements of Felix’s heart. The stairs melt below him, still familiar after all these years. He lets himself be led up in spiral after spiral, the strides he takes to climb them the same, fading into monotony. And yet, it still feels like no longer than a heartbeat before he reaches the top, spies another figure, and steps out into the light. “I’m here.”

Byleth’s already waiting, leaning against the rail, faced towards the stairs. He turns with Felix’s movements, something unmappable crossing his face. It isn’t like him to be restless, since he’s usually far too controlled, but he’s definitely fidgeting as he offers a greeting in return. “You’re early. And here I wasn’t sure you’d come at all.”

“Why? I always keep my appointments.”

“I know that. But it’s just – have you been avoiding me? It feels like you might be.”

“No,” he says honestly. Because he’s been genuinely busy, and if that means he just so happens to have not seen much of Byleth recently, well. “Our schedules just haven’t lined up.”

“Oh, good. Well, in that case, there’s something I want to tell you before I go.”

“Why you’re leaving? You don’t need to explain yourself to me, Professor. You and I were both always going to move on from here eventually.”

“Yes, but also, not quite. Close your eyes, and hold out your hand.”

“You aren’t going to play some kind of trick on me, are you?”

“You’ll see.” Byleth’s eyes are perfectly serious, but there’s the edge of a smile in his voice. “I promise, though, no tricks.”

Begrudgingly, Felix shuts his eyes and extends his hand. Unfurls his fingers, and waits. Then something cold and metallic drops into his palm, chilly in the summer air despite its lightness, and his stomach drops along with it.

“All right,” Byleth murmurs. He sounds further away than he should be, and there’s a strange and sudden tension to the way he speaks. “You can look now.”

Felix opens his eyes again. Looks at Byleth’s gift. Blinks, as if to convince himself that he isn’t imagining things. Almost swallows his tongue trying to speak.

“A ring?”

“It doesn’t have to mean what you think it means,” Byleth says. He’s leaning on the balcony, gazing out towards the monastery grounds, but Felix can tell from his stance that he’s anxious. “It can just be… a promise to meet again. Nothing more than that.”

The worst and most sarcastic part of Felix’s brain, at least, keeps talking. Even if all his higher functions have wound themselves into a tangle over whether or not this is, well… a  _ proposal_. “Why do you have that with you?”

“I brought it to give to you, but to be honest, I’m in the habit of carrying it around. It’s all I have left of my father – well, of both my parents. And now it’s something you can have left of me, no matter how far apart we are.”

“Don’t make it sound like you’re going to die. Not again.”

“I’m not planning on it. But Fodlan is a big place, and there’s no telling where either of us will be a year from now. Or two, or five, or ten. But that’s my vow to you that, no matter what, we’ll cross swords again. And when we do, you can give that ring back to me.”

Felix turns his hand, lets the ring catch what light there is left. In the gathering darkness, in the shadow of his fingers, the stones set into it are almost invisible.

“What if I don’t want to?”

“If you don’t want to accept it? That’s fine. To be honest, I wasn’t sure you’d even like the idea in the first place.”

“No. I mean, what if I accept it, and I don’t want to give it back.”

“Felix.” There’s so much feeling bound up in how Byleth says his name. Wonder, and hope, and something stretched taut enough to break. “Felix, I –”

“No, listen to me. Because I don’t know how to say this, or even what I want to say to you, only that I need to say something. I’ve been idling at Garreg Mach too long, and I think it’s because I only just worked out that I even needed to say anything at all.”

He takes a deep breath. “But you’re more than a teacher to me. Probably more than a friend, too. I started off wanting to beat you at swordplay because I wanted to grow stronger, but… after a while, that stopped being the only reason. I think I wanted you to look at me as an equal, too, not just one of your former pupils. And I didn’t know how else to convey that to you, except by force. To be honest, beyond that, I still don’t know how to understand my feelings for you. Or even if I’m not just… making it all up, because I don’t want to lose my best sparring partner. I’m not good with matters of the heart, Professor. But I’ll be keeping this ring. And I won’t be letting you run off to wherever you please, either, at least not alone. You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”

There’s a fierce tenderness in Byleth’s eyes. It’s a new expression on him, illuminating his entire face. “Yes. I… yes. Of course, Felix. I’m not good at this either, but you deserve an answer, so… I’ve lost so many things, and I’ve only just won back my humanity. It remains to be seen who I’ll become, now that my fate isn’t bound to the progenitor god. But you’ve been my equal for a long time, and – I asked to meet you at the Goddess Tower for a reason. In the hope you might not want to be parted, either.”

Felix steps over to the railing, slides the ring – silver, studded with green stones, delicate against his rough skin – onto the appropriate finger. The left hand, for an engagement; for a promise. Byleth scoots his hand over, gently covers Felix’s. The calluses ranged along their fingers are a near-perfect mirror.

A slow silence sets in. He’s used to the quiet being comfortable, between them, but it’s not usually this gentle. Byleth rests his head on Felix’s shoulder – and then, seemingly realising that their promise isn’t an implicit agreement to physical contact, pulls away again. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No,” he says. “It’s fine. Go back.”

Byleth gives a tiny sigh, but it’s fond at the edges. This time, when he rests his head on a shoulder, Felix turns his face a little to meet him. Byleth’s hair isn’t especially soft, and smells like sweat and soap rather than a finely perfumed fragrance, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“So,” Felix says, maddeningly aware of how his breath makes Byleth’s flyaways rustle. “What exactly am I to you?  _ Just _ your equal?”

“Selfish, aren’t you.” Byleth must sense him ramping up to protest, because he carries on after an amused huff. “That isn’t a bad thing. Being around you made me feel like maybe I could want something for myself, too.”

“Well, then, if you’re expecting my selfishness – I want to hear you say it.”

He can feel Byleth’s smile. “Someday. But not yet.”

“Ha! Keep your secrets, Professor. I suppose you don’t need to say anything anyway. You asked me to meet you here, and we both know what the legend of this tower means. I’ll hear it from you sooner or later.”

“You will,” Byleth says, and it’s so matter of fact that Felix’s breath catches a little. “Actually, though. Did you come to the Goddess Tower during the ball, as a student? I can’t imagine you planned to meet anyone here, but I can’t imagine you didn’t sneak off after a while, either. Not that you have to answer, but… I still want to know more about you.”

His mouth suddenly goes dry. He knows he doesn’t have to be honest, or even say anything at all. But that feels like something the old Felix would do, the one who only ever changed for the worse. And if he’s to offer his heart to Byleth, wounded as it is, they may as well try and work the thorns out of it together. “I did. And there was someone else there when I arrived.”

There’s only one way that this story can end, and they both know it. With Felix, acutely seventeen and tired of his classmates, beelining for the Goddess Tower, chasing his shadow up the spiral stairs, until he had emerged onto the highest balcony. With Dimitri turning from where he had been braced against this same railing, silhouetted against the night, and how, when he’d realised his visitor was Felix – after everything, despite everything, there still hadn’t been an ounce of disappointment in him. With making two different vows, facing in two different directions. Felix can’t even remember what his had been, only that it must have been for strength and not happiness. Dimitri hadn’t voiced his, only looked at him with those eyes that begged forgiveness, even as they couldn’t bring themselves to expect it. And he can’t remember, now, which of them had said:  _ don’t tell me what you wished for, or it’ll never come true. _

(But Dimitri had told him afterward anyway, even though Felix hadn’t asked. And the irony is, he doesn’t even remember anything about his dearest friend’s wish. Only that, like Dimitri himself, it had been a beautiful, impossible dream.)

“You aren’t going to ask?”

“I don’t need to know the specifics, especially if you don’t want to share them.”

“Well. All right.” He swallows, and adds, in a burst of courage: “But it did matter, that Dimitri and I met here. Even though things weren’t like that between us, and I don’t think I wanted them to be, it meant something.”

“Okay. Thank you for telling me.”

“Hmph. And you? I know I’m not the only one who ducked out of the ball early. Was there anyone you happened to meet at the Goddess Tower? I’m sure you had Eagles lining up to try and invite you here. You know I’ll fight them off, if I have to.”

Byleth makes a noise that Felix, now, can manage to interpret as embarrassment. “Ah – Linhardt, actually. We didn’t make plans to meet, but we sort of ran into each other anyway. And we did make a vow, but it wasn’t something that meant anything, at least in terms of the way we thought about each other. Just that he wanted me to promise to let him study my Crest.”

The  _ bastard_. So that’s why Linhardt had seemed so certain of himself when they’d spoken about Byleth in the dining hall. Felix pulls himself free of their embrace, the better to level a skewering glare. “I’m going to fight him.”

“I’m fairly sure he’s spoken for, and it was a long time ago, anyway. So I wouldn’t exactly call him a threat to our relationship.”

“I don’t care. It’s about the principle, and I’m absolutely, definitely going to fight him when we meet next.”

“Felix.” Byleth catches his hand, turns it so the ring on his finger reflects what little light there is. “I’m spoken for now, too.”

“Well,” he says, “we’ll see. Let’s not rule anything out too early.”

It occurs to him, then, the way that they’re standing. Byleth by the railing, still, and Felix poised like he’s looking for a fight, like he might yank his hand back at any moment. It’s too antagonistic, and he withdraws into himself. “I ruined the moment, didn’t I.”

“No, you didn’t,” Byleth insists, and then he gives a little half-shrug. “All right, maybe you did a little. But you can un-ruin it again.”

When he turns back to face out over the railing again, Felix goes with him. And when Byleth rests his head and closes his eyes, Felix’s thoughts drift out over Garreg Mach, and northward to Faerghus. Over the mountains, over the rivers. To the lands of Charon, Galatea, Blaiddyd. To Fraldarius, and the home he can never go back to.

Crests and Relics are meaningless to him, and have been for a long time, but that wasn’t always the case. Growing up, Felix hadn’t been able to stop himself from being disappointed that the Fraldarius Relic was so boring; Dimitri and Sylvain and Ingrid had all been set to inherit lances, famous and powerful weapons, and Felix was stuck with a useless old shield.

A shield that, as it turned out, hadn’t been able to protect anyone. It hadn’t done Glenn any good, when it mattered, nor his father, and Felix himself hadn’t had the heart to take it into battle at Arianrhod. He’d gotten a nasty cut along his left arm for his trouble, but it had been about the principle. That his defection to the Empire hadn’t been as the Fraldarius heir, but as a soldier, tired of chivalry and nobility and talk over action. Tired of where all those grand ideals had gotten him, and the people he had loved, back when he had known how to.

(There was supposed to have been a sword, too, but he’d never seen it.  _ A knight is a shield first_, his father had always said,  _ and a blade second _.)

But looking at Byleth, now, he thinks he understands.

(He wonders if Rodrigue would have liked Byleth – and remembers, with a start, that they’d met when his father had come to Garreg Mach. That his father  _ had_. And, well, maybe Felix will do something right by the old man yet.)

“What are you planning to do now?”

There’s a long pause as Byleth weighs up his thoughts. When he answers, his voice is quiet, almost confessional. “There’s going to be another war, after this one. Hubert told me before he left. Against those who slither in the dark and their allies, who can’t be allowed to exist in Fodlan any longer. And I want to stand with Edelgard as she wages that war, both as her tactician, and as her friend. Because when I chose to side with her against Rhea, that meant choosing to side with her against anything. But… I also want to give you something better than another battlefield. You shouldn’t have to keep on fighting, Felix, not after all this.”

“I like fighting, though.”

“I know. But I want to give you a world where you can learn to like other things.”

“What kind of things?”

“I’m not sure,” Byleth admits. “I’m not good at liking things other than fighting, either.”

“Come on, you like plenty of things. Like… fishing. And gardening, and tea parties, and dogs. And wrangling troublesome students.”

Byleth tucks his face more deeply into Felix’s neck. “And you.”

Felix’s whole body feels far too warm, suddenly, and he fights to not shove Byleth off. “Don’t embarrass me, Professor.”

“Was that too much?”

“No,” he grits out, “it was fine. But my point was, you’re still ahead of me where it counts. So much has happened, and I still can’t imagine myself as anything other than a hired sword.”

“Then we can find out. Edelgard’s new war won’t start for at least a few months, and I’m on strict instructions to be on holiday until that happens. So… choose a course, and I’ll go with you, before we have to take up our weapons again. And we can just be ourselves for a while, whoever those people might be.”

Felix turns his hand palm-up, curls his fingers in over Byleth’s ring. It’s hard to imagine who he might be, without all this tragedy. With all the pain in him neatly sectioned out, with every wound stitched closed. Perhaps that same crybaby he was when he was young; perhaps someone stately and respectable like his father; perhaps someone like Glenn, if Glenn were to have smiled more. Perhaps someone entirely different. But he wants to become someone Byleth won’t regret choosing, even if he doesn’t know the shape of that Felix yet.

“East, then,” he says. “To what used to be the Alliance. Or maybe even past it, to Fodlan’s Locket and Almyra. I’ve always wondered what it might be like there.”

He doesn’t have to say that Faerghus is one ache, and Adrestia another. Or that, someday, he’ll return to Faerghus lands. But not now; not yet. Only once he’s managed to heal, and once he’s learned to be friends with Sylvain and Ingrid properly, and once every shadow he sees out of the corner of his eye stops resolving itself into Dimitri, and once he’s managed to work out if the way his heart catches, when he wonders if he might be a little in love with Byleth, means what he thinks it does.

“All right. To be honest, I’m curious about Almyra too. It’ll be an adventure.”

“Well, we’ll see. Knowing you, I’m sure we’ll run into ten complications on our first day out of Garreg Mach.”

“Complaining so soon? If you’re having second thoughts, this is your last chance to back out.”

He can’t quite figure out if that’s supposed to be serious or lighthearted. There’s something a little worried in Byleth’s eyes, surfacing from beneath that dark blue, when Felix turns his head to meet them. And it  _ will _ be complicated, even if it’s also going to be exciting and new. Byleth’s too sympathetic for his own good, even if he’s broken-up under that, and more than a little famous as a mercenary and tactician, and has five missing years of his life to make up for. Who knows what trouble, what adventure they’ll run into together? Anything could happen. But it’s hard for Felix to be all that concerned about that. Because no adventure could compare to learning the contours of Byleth’s face against his skin, or the arcs of the people they’ll grow into, or the geography of the way their hearts might come to meet.

“No,” Felix says, “not for the world,” and means it.


End file.
